Mike's Blog for this week is geared towards fueling our bodies properly.Outdoors Experience week of September 8:Walk 5, ran 30, three 3-mile canoe sprintsPlan for week of September15: run 30, race canoe 3 miles 3 times

COOKBOOKS FOR A WHOLE-FOOD, PLANT-BASED DIETThere are dozens. All the following are good. My wife Marilyn suggested these and wrote most of this piece. As to what I eat. Think of meals centered around a whole grain, instead of a chicken. Brown rice, oats, quinoa, whole wheat and more. If you want to be traditional, have oats for breakfast, with a non-dairy alternative like soy, rice, hemp or almond non-milk.

For breakfast, a bowl of miso soup, which is a few vegetables chopped up, with a tablespoon of miso simmered in. And greens: collards, kale, mustard greens, or turnip greens. Steam them a few minutes, just until the color changes. Stems on some can be tough, so either cut them off first and steam them longer or use them to make vegetable bouillon.

Some books on lunch and dinner. The Quick and Natural Macrobiotic Cookbook has a weeks worth of recipes that introduce you to new foods you might be unused to like miso. John Robbins has great recipes in May All Be Fed. Kushi’s Macrobiotic Cooking has recipes for a wealth of vegetarian meals. Note that macrobiotic diets include some fish. You can skip that !

The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen is a lot fun. And Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen is awesome. The Vegan Table takes some traditional foods and creates great vegan meals and The Natural Gourmet , while not totally vegan (switch from butter to olive oil – or skip the oil altogether) has some fine grain-based dishes and new ways to do vegetables.

Definitely experiment with cutting and eliminating oil in a lot of recipes. You’ll find some of these also have granulated sugar. The macrobiotic cookbooks show how to avoid cooking with processed sugar. Some favorites: Dark Onion Soup, Noodles with Sesame Sauce, Baked Beans with Miso and Apple Butter, and Orange Millet Pilaf from The Natural Gourmet.Tofu Scramble, from Vegan Table and Scrambled Tofu and Corn from Macrobiotic Cooking are great brunch dishes that stun the I-don’t-like-tofu crowd.

Seitan Stroganoff and Sweet and Sour Vegetables and Seitan from Cooking with Seitan are good for starting to learn to cook with seitan and are fine one-dish meals. Bryant Terry’s Smothered Seitan Medallions in Mixed-Mushroom Gravy is awesome. Always bring Terry’s Roasted Sweet Potato Puree with Coconut Milk to Thanksgiving dinner.

John Robbins’ Brown Rice Paella is a campfire favorite and Ginger Carrot Cake can be fixed at home and brought along. Cooking the brown rice for the Paella separately and freezing it, makes cooking the dish after a day of paddling faster and easier. And the frozen brown rice helps keep the cooler cool! Mediterranean Vegan Cookbook tops the pasta with a real change of pace. Check out the pesto recipes.

Subtly Sweet Chick Pea Stew from The Macrobiotic Community Cookbook and Red Lentil Soup from The Tempeh Cookbook always work well. Rosemary Popcorn, is a fun start at looking at food differently.

The Rave Diet. Breaking the Food Seduction. Power Foods for the Brain. The Engine 2 Diet. These books have recipes, but I really recommended reading!